I wanted that for her so bad I could taste it.
Sandra says, “You’re better than me.”
I told her it wasn’t a dog show. Nobody better than the next person. We’re all just in here trying. Anybody can make up their mind to try. If she’d just please try—
Sandra grabbed her bag. Said she was trying for a new life. Her own frigging sister wouldn’t even be her frigging bridesmaid. Stomped out. Left me to pay.
When I got home, Dave was right at the door to see how things had went.
I shook my head. Hadn’t been the day for no amazing grace.
Dave banged his fist on the mud room wall. Busted the drywall.
I stood there looking at the insulation, thinking about what kind of a wall I always hit with Sandra, what kind of insulation.
29.
SO THEN, FINALLY, Dave seen that Jenny wasn’t never going home. I wanted me and him to adopt her. I never dared to say it yet, though. I could see there was a lot of stepping stones between here and there.
Me and Dave were only just starting to patch things up between us. I still had to show that I could act right, myself. Jenny was better off where she was than she would be with me if I was going to run after creeps. Dave had to make sure that he was done with the drug dealing. We had to figure out if we were moving back north. If so, I’d need to find a job up there. And, before we could do anything, we had to, as Meredith says, rebuild trust.
“It’s interesting, ain’t it, eh?” Dave says one afternoon. “Josie and her second sight.”
“Yeah. It’s something.”
“That’s what got Sally living back north, looking after Dad.”
I told Dave about the picture of the yellow tulips.
Dave says, “And she pictured me as the handyman, remember? You were just telling me about that when the landlord called me up and offered me my first paid handyman work. I felt like Josie opened the door. Alls I had to do was walk through it.”
“Tammy and Sally are still always talking about that hotel thing. Even Marg. She don’t much believe in it. But she’ll mention it when she needs a pick-me-up.”
It was after that talk, on Sunday night just when Dave was packing up to leave, that I got my nerve up to finally tell him I had a picture of my own. I told him I could picture me and him adopting Jenny.
Dave, he stopped with his shirt half-folded.
This was only our second weekend back together after all that had went on. Dave looked at the red plaid shirt in his hands. “Well,” he said, “maybe someday.” Said he thought we had a ways to go before we could make plans like that.
He had every right to say it, so I didn’t cry till after he’d went.
He’d be down next weekend. We’d talk it over some more, he said. He give me a pat on the shoulder.
I said that would be fine.
He went.
Then I ran around the apartment and screamed. Why did I do that with Dirk? Why did I go and do that? Now everything was different between me and Dave. No telling when or if he could ever feel the same again.
I started cleaning stuff. There was me with the floor mop, bawling, punishing the grey vinyl peel-and-stick floor tiles in the entryway. I’m scrubbing back and forth. Can’t believe I screwed Dirk. Can’t believe I was such a frigging weak useless piece of crap. Pretty near took the finish off them tiles.
Lunchtime on Monday, Marg come over to bring me a doughnut, since she was out sneaking one herself. (Said not to tell Tammy.)
“I’ve went and wrecked it all,” I says to her. “Now he don’t trust me. How could he?”
“Give him time, Rose,” Marg says, licking her fingers. “You just got to show him you’re not going to do nothing like that again. It’s going to take some time. You’ll just have to treat him right, keep on getting yourself fixed up and wait patient.”
Patient, eh? When I got home that night, I made myself a new stepping stone: Patience. I stood on it. Stood on one foot and the other, watching the sky out the window go from pink to mauve to that dark blue.
Patient. Okay. Patient as a stump, that’s me, I’m telling myself.
But I can tell yous, I was none too patient inside. If everything could just be back to how it was before! If Dave could just forget this ever happened! If he could just hurry up and trust me again!
Leaned my elbows on the kitchen counter. Wondered how long it would take. Next weekend? Four more weekends? I was fighting off a feeling that trust could be an awful slow-growing type of a plant.
To practise being patient, I decided I was going to stand there till I could see a star.
I never watched a star appear before. It took so frigging long to come, but it was nice when it finally showed. Silver tip of a needle, sewing one bright stitch into the dark.
When I was over to see Jenny, we took the rocking chair out on the porch to wait for a star. I told her it takes patience, waiting and watching for good things to come. (There’s me, eh, talking like I’m this wise old aunt. Half the things I tell Jenny, I only just found out myself the day before.)
Jenny pointed to the dark. “That’s like me.”
I looked where she was pointing. Couldn’t see nothing. I says, “Is there a star there somewheres?”
“No.”
I held her to me. Her hair smelled good. Her head was buried just under my chin. “Are you telling me you’re like the dark?”
She nods. “Nobody should see me.”
“Why shouldn’t nobody see you?”
“Anybody, Ann Toes.”
“Okay. That,” I says. “Why is that?”
“Because I should be ashamed of myself.”
“Who told you that?” I’m thinking, fuck, if they’re telling her that here, I’m going to kidnap her!
Into my collar, she whispers, “Mommy.”
I talked to the social worker (Mrs. B., Jenny called her, and that’s as much name as I ever had for her). She was all right. She told me that, yes, Sandra had been over to see Jenny this weekend. No, nobody in the foster home would be telling Jenny that she ought to be ashamed. And, yes, she’d have a word with Sandra about it.
I said, “Look,” I said, “my sister is so screwed up. You really got to keep an eye on her with Jenny.”
They sure didn’t, though.
Couple of weeks later was the long weekend in May. The weekend of the wedding. Dave said the sign out in front of the hall should read Congratulations, Sandra and Dickhead.
“Congratulations, Dickhead and Stupid,” I says. Because, the way I see it, she’s just about as bad as him.
I was to take Jenny with me on the bus to Strone. We were going to spend that weekend with the folks back north. Dave, he’d found a turtle Jell-O mould. Told Jenny he had a surprise for her.
Which reminded me, I heard Dave had a surprise for me too, a while back. Hadn’t saw it yet. When I asked him about that on the phone, he got quiet. So I dropped it.
I show up to get Jenny on Saturday morning.
Foster woman says, “Come on in, Rose. Jenny’s in the sun room. She’s been happy all morning just with a blanket and the chairs in there. She made a blanket fort and crawled in under it with her rabbit. I haven’t heard another peep out of her. Jenny! Look who’s here!”
No answer.
The woman winks at me. She puts on a voice and says, “Now I wonder where Jenny and Timothy Rabbit are!”
I play along. “I bet they’re in the fridge.” I open it. “Nope. I guessed wrong.”
We play like that for a while, look a few more foolish places to let Jenny think we can’t guess where she is. But me and Jenny got a bus to catch so I say, “Hey! I wonder if she’s in the blanket fort!”
No answer.
“Okay, Jenny. Come on out now, honey. We got to get going. We’re going to see Dave.”
&
nbsp; No answer.
I look in the blanket fort and laugh because we’ve been playing this game by ourself. Nobody in there.
Foster woman says, “I dropped that fern and spilled the dirt. On the cream carpet, of course. Jenny must have gone up to her room when I had the vacuum on and I couldn’t hear her. Or maybe she’s in the den.”
We looked those places and met each other back in the kitchen. We’d quit laughing.
Woman hurried down to the basement playroom. I checked all the bedrooms. I looked in the upstairs bathroom. In the closets. Behind the shower curtains. We searched the house. We started running. We looked in the garage. I searched the backyard, under the bushes, around between the house and the garden shed, up the ladder in the playhouse, under the porch, while the foster woman was doing the same out front. When we’d looked everywhere, we come running back into the kitchen, panting, and stared at each other.
She starts calling the police, and I take off.
I got a feeling I know where to look. She’s been told ten times that it ain’t happening, but Sandra’s been going on and on about having her heart set on Jenny for a flower girl at her frigging wedding.
I run the five blocks to Sandra’s. I pound up the stairs. I knock. No answer. Still have a key. Use it.
Sure enough, there’s a fancy dress hanging in the kitchen. Jenny-sized but grown-woman style. Silver, slinky, shiny. (Sandra hasn’t got the first clue about kids, eh—that a little girl ain’t a woman.) I’m just about to holler for Sandra. Something stops me. The bedroom door’s shut.
Why would that be?
I kept quiet. Went along the hall. Nobody in the bathroom or the front room. If Sandra and Ian were here with Jenny, what would they be doing in the bedroom with the door shut?
Then I heard a sound off my bad sounds list.
I’m standing there in Sandra’s kitchen, looking at that little adult dress, thinking, if I ever do one right thing in my life, let me do it now. If Jenny really is in there, don’t let me scare her. Don’t shame her. Walk into that bedroom and do the right thing, whatever that is.
That sound. I felt like I knew that sound. I felt like Ian was in there with Jenny.
Oh god, and my sister was probably out getting her toenails painted or something.
Ian’s a fair-sized man. Me, I’m only five foot four.
I give myself that half-second breather. For a person that don’t specially believe in anything, I seem to pray a lot.
I put my hand on the bedroom doorknob. It was locked.
What now?
I picked up the kitchen phone and I dialled 9. I stopped. If I dialled 9-1-1, what would happen to Jenny? I didn’t want no siren scaring her, no police making her feel like a criminal. I thought it would be better to get her out of there myself, gentle and quiet, if I could.
With the phone in my hand, I walked back over and stood near the outside door. I called out “Hello?” like I’d just came in the house and didn’t suspect nothing. I’m thinking, I’ll give him three seconds to get up and open that bedroom door. If he don’t, I’ll make the call.
Silence.
“Anybody home?”
Nothing. Why don’t Jenny answer?
“Ian?”
A man’s voice. “Who’s there?”
I said it was me and I come to shake hands with him on his wedding day, wish him all the best. Oh thanks, he says, but he’s just out of the shower. Could I wait a minute? He said, cool as you please, for me to take a chair.
The old adrenaline was cranked up full. My head had went clear. I could see real plain, hear real sharp. There’s a pair of orange flowered oven mitts laying on the stove. I’m staring at them like I never seen an oven mitt. The thumbs is dirty and one’s burnt.
I could hear Ian getting something off a coat hanger. Some other little sound I don’t know what it would be, like a sort of a muffled door closing sound and some funny shuffling around. Why don’t I hear Jenny, if she’s here?
Then there’s the groom strolling into the kitchen in his bathrobe. He don’t look to me like he just got out of no shower. There’s a cobweb hanging on his hair.
He went to shake hands.
I wasn’t touching him. “Where’s Jenny?”
“Jenny? Oh, she’s not here.”
I shot past him into the bedroom, phone in my sweating hand. There’s nobody in the bedroom.
I can hear him from the kitchen, asking what I’m doing. “Sandra’s out,” he says. “And what would Jenny be doing here?”
He sounds so casual I have one flash where I wonder if I’m wrong.
The white duvet is messed up. Purple sheets ain’t. Looks like the bed’s been made once today. Just the cover’s been used. Ian’s standing in the doorway. He’s tall, a bit overweight. He’s got fair, thin hair and a red face.
I hear a sound like a mouse makes in a wall. One tiny little scratch. But it wasn’t no mouse. That was all the proof I needed.
Adrenaline’s got its place. I heard that scratch, knew it was Jenny, knew what I had to do and done it, all in one flash. I flew out of that bedroom, ran past Ian, shouting to him that I was going to puke. Ran down the hall. Locked myself in the bathroom. Made a loud retching noise while I dialled. Flushed the toilet to cover while I whispered the address. Told them to send police quick.
Then I strolled back down the hall, and I sat in the kitchen with Ian, my heart pounding. Said I had a touch of flu. Felt okay now.
“So, what kind of finger foods you planning on serving this afternoon?” I says to him.
He looks me up and down. His eyes are narrow.
“Little toast things,” he says.
“Oh, yeah? Those are always nice,” I says, and I can see he’s starting to relax.
“With like cheese on them,” he says. “And pickles.”
“Pickles too, eh?”
“There’s a woman makes up these trays,” he says.
“Whereabouts does she work out of?”
I feel like I been sitting there about a year. What the hell else can you say about cheese things and pickles? What’s Jenny doing? Is she hiding under the bed? In the closet? What has he told her to make her so she won’t call out even to me? She must be able to hear my voice. Did he threaten her or what? I asked if there was going to be devilled eggs. Where was them cops?
I heard the siren across town.
“So, Ian,” I says, “got a new suit?”
Ian, he told me about his Salvation Army store three-piece suit, good as new for twenty bucks. Fits him like tailor-made, he says. I’m nodding, asking him what colour and listening to the siren turning up Maplewood.
“Fine blue stripe, eh? That’ll look sharp.”
Said he got some two-dollar shoes from the same place. I told him to make sure he took the two-dollar sticker off the bottom of them before he went and kneeled down at the front of the church.
Stupid the way your head works at a time like that. A picture flashed into my mind: Sally’s God Almighty zapping him right through between the shoulder blades with a zig-zag cartoon bolt of yellow lightning. I let out one hysterical sort of a laugh.
Cops had the brains to shut the siren off before they turned on to this street. Ian’s telling me how many cases of beer he’s got in. When I hear the cops’ boots on the stairs, I stand up and run.
I look in the bedroom closet. The scratch I heard sounded like that direction. Nobody there.
The cops are in the kitchen, asking who called. Ian’s busy telling them we never called. So I run back out there and say, “Yes. I did.” Because this here man is a child molester who I just caught with my little niece that he must have stole out of her foster care, I don’t know how.
So then they’re blocking the door, and they want to know where is the little girl. I run back to the bedroom. Now I can shout for her.
Nothing.
We looked high and low, the one cop and me. “Jenny!”
I checked again. Nobody in the closet. Nobody behind the curtains.
“Jenny?”
Nobody in the big dresser drawers. Nobody in the cedar chest—the hope chest, as poor Sandra always called it. Nobody in the bedding.
The cop says, “You sure there’s a child here?”
“Shhh.”
I thought I heard it again, the little scratch. It was coming from the closet. That’s what I thought before.
“Over here!”
“We already looked in the—”
I whipped open the closet door, and then I could really hear it from up above.
Jesus! In the walk-in closet off that bedroom, there’s a trap door to the attic. We pushed it up and we found her, naked, tied, gagged, stuffed up there, laying in the insulation.
I stood on a box, holding up the trap door while the cop chinned up and looked.
I thought how Sandra’d be dumping all them trays of cheese things. The waste. I was froze stupid, thinking of that who-cares thing, while the cop lifted her down.
Then I got my brain working and grabbed a sweater of Sandra’s to wrap her in. I didn’t want that blanket off the bed. I didn’t want that to touch her.
She’d been tied up with two belts. Sandra’s green scarf was the gag. We got her loose, and I bundled her to me. She was like a rag doll, except that she turned her face and hid it against me.
My arm was getting wet.
The cop said, “She’s bleeding.”
30.
I PHONED DAVE from the hospital. Dave was for roaring down here to murder Ian. I says, “Drive careful, darlin’. We’ll be at the hospital all night. Leave the gun.”
The doctor said Jenny was tore down there, but they’d get her fixed up. He stitched her up and give her something for the pain.
Paper Stones Page 26
